Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and motivation

One key to motivating people is understanding what drives them. In most western cultures individual needs dominate driving factors and other forces take a back seat. Many other cultures, for example Maori, indigenous Australians and Pacific Islanders, regard collective requirements as more important than individual concerns.

People from these backgrounds put tribal, cultural or family needs first and individual needs second. Second generation immigrants from these backgrounds can follow either pattern – or both patterns at the same time.

Among the first researchers to study human driving forces was Abraham Maslow, who devised the ‘hierarchy of needs’.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says an individual needs can be listed in order of relative importance. At the bottom of the list are the stronger, instinctive, more animal-like drivers. The top of the list has weaker, but more sophisticated human needs.

Here’s a simplified look at the list ordered from bottom to top:

Physiological
This covers basic needs like breathing, getting enough food, finding a place of shelter, keeping warm and dealing with various bodily functions (significantly this includes sexual gratification). In crude terms, you can’t progress up the hierarchy if you can’t breath or you are freezing to death.

Safety
People need to feel safe from physical danger. They also need physical, mental and emotional security. Again, people will make sure they are out of the firing line before they worry about dealing with higher needs.

Social
Everybody, even those who say otherwise, needs human contact and love. They also need to belong to social groups such as families, organisations, groups and gangs.

Esteem
This can be characterised as feelings of self-worth and self-reliance. People also have a deep-rooted desire to be recognised by others in terms of respect, praise and status. The flip side of this is than many people have low self-esteem or an inferiority complex. Maslow argued that because just about everyone in the western world has the bottom three bases covered, the esteem driver lies at the root of most psychological problems. By extension we can see this is the key to many interpersonal relationships in the workplace.

Self-Actualisation
The highest need a person can have is the to achieve their full potential and maximise their personal development.

Maslow’s theory says that people generally tend to move up the hierarchy; indeed progressing up the list is the essence of motivation. Once people have enough to eat, they start to look around for physical safety. Once they have esteem they move towards self-actualisation.

On the other hand if someone’s more basic needs are threatened, they will move down the steps to the level necessary to protect that need. So, for instance, most people are prepared to trade their self-esteem in return for belonging to a social group. Alternatively just about everyone would be prepared to take great risks with their personal safety and simply wouldn’t care about esteem if they were in danger of starving.

Not everyone agrees with Maslow’s hierarchy, in some ways it is controversial. We’ll look at this later. However, despite the criticisms it makes a great practical tool for managers.

If you are managing someone and you threaten his or her security in some way, you can expect to see a strong reaction. People will go a long way in order to defend themselves from such a threat.

On the other side of the ledger, Maslow argues that once a person has taken care of a particular need on the list, it ceases to be a motivating force and they progress to the next level.

Further reading:

Sliding down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs